The Kansas City Chiefs and their fans can rest easy right now, as Chris Jones has ended his holdout and agreed upon a new and revised contract. Jones was noticeably missing from the Chiefs defensive line in their season opening loss against the Detroit Lions on Thursday Night. Jones, if you don’t know already, is one of the best players at his position.
The deal eventually got done. Though it wasn’t guaranteed that it would. Jones was taking daily fines of $50,000 per day missed in training camp. On top of that, he lost out on a game check for skipping the season opener against the Lions. Not that this matters much to him. He stated on social media that he would have no problem sitting out until Week 8 if necessary. Chiefs’ fans don’t have to worry about that happening though. He’s locked in now for the remainder of the season and doesn’t plan to miss another game in the regular season. Of course, his salary of $19.5 million made sitting out that long a possibility. Thankfully, that’s not the case.
Now, the new and revised contract hasn’t had a number reported just yet. The only thing that’s currently known regarding this new deal is that it gave him a boatload of incentives to get extra money. This isn’t an unusual thing for an NFL team to do. We’ve seen it a few times already this season. Saquon Barkley and the New York Giants are a good example. Same goes with Austin Ekeler and the Los Angeles Chargers. Both backs took a small, minor bump in base salaries while adding a ton of incentives to earn them extra with the goal to renegotiate again next season. The same could happen here with Jones and the Chiefs.
Chris Jones Deserves The Deal
Regardless, Chris Jones deserves the contract he got and will be getting next year. He’s won two Super Bowls with the Chiefs. And has also been the best player on that defense in both of those victories. He also had 15.5 sacks a season ago from the defensive tackle position, which isn’t an easy thing to do considering how much more effective edge rushers usually are in comparison. Still, he was named an All-Pro. He was also one of the team’s most important players on the roster.
A big question that now comes around is whether or not the Chiefs will limit Jones and his snaps. This is when they play the Jacksonville Jaguars in Week 2. Will Jones be in good enough shape like Nick Bosa and play every down for Kansas City? Or will he come in needing some extra time to get his legs under him on the field and the team will give him just a few drives before letting him rest. Whatever the case may be, he’ll be impactful. Plus, this team desperately wants to avoid starting the year with a 0-2 record with all of the talent that they have on their roster and with Patrick Mahomes leading the charge.